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Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

Long-Term Exposure to Antibiotics Has Caused Accumulation of Resistance Determinants in the Gut Microbiota of Honeybees

We found that 50 years of using antibiotics in beekeeping in the United States has resulted in extensive tetracycline resistance in the gut microbiota. These bacteria, which form a distinctive community present in healthy honeybees worldwide, may function in protecting bees from disease and in providing nutrition. In countries that do not use antibiotics in beekeeping, bee gut bacteria contained far fewer resistance genes. The tetracycline resistance that we observed in American samples reflects the capture of mobile resistance genes closely related to those known from human pathogens and agricultural sites. Thus, long-term treatment to control a specific pathogen resulted in the accumulation of a stockpile of resistance capabilities in the microbiota of a healthy gut. This stockpile can, in turn, provide a source of resistance genes for pathogens themselves. The use of novel antibiotics in beekeeping may disrupt bee health, adding to the threats faced by these pollinators.

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

Originally Posted by sqkcrk

I wonder what they would have found had they lloked at bees from my hives, since I do not use TM or Tylosin.

but does the person you get your queens from also not use antibiotics? If what they say is really true, then why hasn't more resistant afb shown up? I find much of the reaserch being done to be interesting, and great pieces of information to be used in other articles, but not of much use to me.

mike syracuse ny
I went to bed mean, and woke up meaner. Marshal Dillon

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

Originally Posted by sqkcrk

I wonder what they would have found had they lloked at bees from my hives, since I do not use TM or Tylosin.

Not much if you don't have any AFB present. If you do, it depends on where it came from. If you brought in comb from a contaminated source, then you would know, one way or another if your AFB was resistant to TM.

I do know that TM resistant AFB is around. A large number of nucleus colonies hit the market in New England, summer of 2011. Lots of disease problems...AFB, EFB, and SHB en masse. I confronted seller, telling him he shouldn't be dumping Tylan dependant bees on unsuspecting hobby beekeepers. He tried to weasel out of the issue by telling me he didn't use the product, as it was against BMP of Florida. Poppy-cock! Maybe I wasn't supposed to see it, but his inspection report...which I was shown, has his AFB being severely resistant to TM. As the northern hobbyists don't even know what Tylan is...once they stopped the treatments, their new bees crashed...and spread their diseases.

wildbranch...it won't matter to you, unless bees like these are set down next to one of your apiaries.

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

We do not test for antibiotic resistance. Please be honest. We do test for AHB (Africanized)
Worse than AFB resistance, use of any antibiotics allows AFB, EFB, Nosema to make bees sick.
Symbionts as Major Modulators of Insect Health: Lactic Acid Bacteria and Honeybees
Honeybees possess an abundant, diverse and ancient LAB microbiota in their honey crop with beneficial effects for bee health, defending them against microbial threats. Beekeeping management practices can negatively impact this microbiota. The crop microbiota of A. mellifera is composed of 13 bacterial species within the genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium [16], [17], [18] and it plays a key role in the production of honey [16] and bee-bread [19], long term stored food for both adult honeybees and larvae. We have demonstrated by both in vitro and in vivo studies that the LAB microbiota in A. mellifera inhibit one important honeybee pathogen, the bacterial brood pathogen Paenibacillus larvae that is the cause of the brood disease American foulbrood (AFB)

To dumb it down – antibiotics given to bees before there is a problem can cause a problem!

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

Bees emerge sterile...gut microbes in larvae are shed along with intestinal lining before pupation.

After emergence, bees get inoculated with culture from the hive. They can only get what is available. Inoculation likely happens orally, through cleaning, shared food, etc.

Where does the queen poop? Who cleans up after her and the others? Yes, we have seen workers poop in an observation hive that had only been closed for a few hours when poop was observed...another worker cleaned it up so fast it was almost like it hadn't happened.

If there is antibiotic resistance in the gut microbes of queen, this is part of what the workers will get when they are inoculated. They probably also get cultures from other workers. I've been puzzling through this for a while, trying to figure out where the gut microbes originate and how much effect in population as a whole comes from queen to workers, workers to queen, etc.

When it comes to the queen's poop, or poop in general, and how the colony is inoculated, there is a dearth of information.

You can read a lot about nosema but not so much about the benefits of healthy poop in a colony.

Many of us can probably sing the Activia jingle and have heard about the miracles of the fecal transplant for humans afflicted with C. difficile...bees aren't so different from us.

Microbes rule the world...for bees, too.

We aren't talking about antibiotic resistance in bees but in the microbial cultures that are shared throughout the colony.

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

I don't think the article here is that good, but at the bottom of the page there is a 7-8min audio interview with Dr. Moran that is worth listening to. I'm writing up some thoughts on this, and will post when they are done.

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

...I can see the day in the future when the chit chat at bee club meetings won't be:
"How are your bees?"
"I've got a high mite count, so I'm treating"
...but instead will be:
"How are your bees?"
"Regular"

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

Originally Posted by deknow

...I can see the day in the future when the chit chat at bee club meetings won't be:
"How are your bees?"
"I've got a high mite count, so I'm treating"
...but instead will be:
"How are your bees?"
"Regular"

deknow

yep. it's kind of like when i'm asked about what kind of bees i have. my reply is 'happy bees'.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

This work shows rather definitively that gut microbiotia is heritable (and very old), and that a line damaged by antibiotics does not return (at least in 25+ years) to its original population. How these populations are affected by other treatments, feeds, and ag chemicals remains to be seen…but Gilliam’s work in the 70’s showed a big change in gut microbal makeupwhen bees were fed sugar, confined, exposed to 2,4,D, fumagillin, and terramycin (yeasts, molds, and bacteria).

What This Study Showed

• That gut microbes in bees from countries that never used antibiotics have a very low copy rate [infrequent in the population] of antibiotic resistance in their gut microbes
• That Bees From Dee Lusby’s operation have levels almost as low as those from countries that never used antibiotics…lower than “feral” bees from Utah…much lower than bees from the Tuscon Lab nearby (that are 2 years without antibiotics)….much, much lower than bees established from commercial packages.

What is Significant

• The honeybee microbial community is very diverse, and presumably selecting for only the antibiotic resistant individuals greatly reduces this diversity (a bottle neck selecting only for the antibiotic resistant individuals). In the buildup period following wiping out all the non-resistant variations, millions of years of co-evolution are thrown out the window.
• Remember that in parallel to selecting _for_ antibiotic resistance, since you are placing the microbial culture into an environment where antibiotics are used to suppress pathogenic bacteria, any pressure on the community to suppress these pathogens is removed…you are now selecting _against_ traits of bacteria that can suppress EFB, AFB, etc are selected _against_ when antibiotics are used.
• Thusly rebuilt communities lack the continuum of diversity inhabiting the continuum of niches that exist throughout the digestive tract and throughout the superorganism…they can’t possibly be as efficient as the undamaged version….and remember…these communities are heritable...the damaged culture is passed along with its damage intact to the next generation.
• Note that the not using of antibiotics, and the incorporation of feral stock has allowed a much less damaged version of these communities to persist in Dee’s bees vs. the bees up the road.
• Antibiotic resistance is metabolically expensive. Populations that are selected for antibiotic resistance have less resources for functions other than antibiotic resistance…this is to say that antibiotic resistance comes at a cost to the population.
• If you don’t think small cost savings are important and affect evolution in relatively short time periods, note the isolated populations of cave fish. When eyes don’t do you any good, the rare genetic combinations/mutations that don’t develop eyes become dominant.

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

I wonder why beekeepers in Nord Amerika use antibiotics? It is a fact that you cannot cure AFB with antibiotics, you hide it. Eventually it breaks out and the result is catastrophic. It is not allowed to use it here and we still have bees, commercial beekeepers and hobby beekeepers.
Antibiotics and up in honey. This is the reason why we have a import ban on honey from countries where beekeepers use antibiotics. We have to send honey for testing, if they find antibiotics we're loosing the permit to sell honey.

Re: Resistannce to the antibiotic tetracycline in Honeybees

Originally Posted by Axtmann

I wonder why beekeepers in Nord Amerika use antibiotics? It is a fact that you cannot cure AFB with antibiotics, you hide it. Eventually it breaks out and the result is catastrophic. It is not allowed to use it here and we still have bees, commercial beekeepers and hobby beekeepers.
Antibiotics and up in honey. This is the reason why we have a import ban on honey from countries where beekeepers use antibiotics. We have to send honey for testing, if they find antibiotics we're loosing the permit to sell honey.

very good point, and the reason why this practice is loosing popularity here as well.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives